Murder in Pastel (23 page)

“What about the
Virgin
?” I questioned flatly.

“I hid it. At first I was waiting for Cos. I didn’t know how to simply return it. Then I got scared. He didn’t come back,” Joel repeated.

“How hard did you hit him? Did he fall? Hit his head?”

“No, no, no! Kyle, really. It didn’t faze him. He said very calmly, ‘Feel better now?’ Knock him down? I was the one on my knees!”

Joel’s story was that the night before Cosmo left Steeple Hill, Joel had gone to him begging for money. It was not the first time Joel had been in trouble with bookies, but this time Cosmo said no. Apparently he had not put it tactfully. Joel had begged and pleaded and finally punched Cosmo in the mouth.

Cosmo had walked away into the woods, into history.

Joel, drunk and desperate, had walked into Cosmo’s house and three minutes later walked out with
Virgin in Pastel
.

“Where was I?”

“Sleeping. I remember Cosmo warned me to keep my voice down. That’s why we went outside.”

I stood up. “That’s it? That’s your story?”

“It’s the gospel truth, so help me.”

“He just disappeared in the woods. You never saw him again? You never heard from him?”

“I swear to God that is the truth.”

“And for a decade you hung on to
Virgin
?”

“I didn’t know what to do with it. I was afraid. A few years ago I thought if I could slip it back into circulation no one would have to know and you could have it back. I knew it was a matter of time before it resurfaced. What I didn’t realize was that Vince of all people would find it, or that he would be such an asshole, or that you wouldn’t fight for the thing.”

“So then you stole it back.”

“No!”

“Come off it, Joel.”

“Listen to me!” Joel sounded frantic. “I did not steal it back. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck with that picture again. And for what? If I was afraid to sell it before, I sure as hell wouldn’t try to move it now.”

That at least made sense—except that he might not have taken the painting back for monetary reasons. Joel was a collector.

“But you know who took it.”

Joel shook his head. “I don’t. Really I don’t.”

“You’re covering for someone, Joel. Who?”

“You have to believe me, dear boy.”

I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone I could believe.

* * * * *

I shut the front door and nearly fainted as Adam rose from the chair he had been waiting in. He had a beaut of a shiner that I would have gladly kissed and made better, but he didn’t give me the chance.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Gee Dad, we ran out of gas.”

“Funny.”

“Well, I’m one of those funny boys. Look, Adam—”

“No, you look, Kyle,” Adam snapped out crisp as celery stalk. “People are dying. I want to know what you’re up to.”

“I’m not killing people if that’s what you’re hinting.”

“Has it occurred to you that by stirring up—”

“I’m not stirring up anything!
Brett
stirred the shit up.”

“THE POINT IS,” Adam drowned me out, “the circle around you is getting smaller and smaller, or haven’t you noticed?”

“I noticed. I’d like to keep it from getting any smaller.”

“You’re not a detective in one of your damn books, Kyle. You’re not… Jesus Christ, you were screaming down the house last night.”

Gotta admit, I didn’t like being reminded of that.

“Hey, if I’m disturbing your beauty rest, I can sleep next door.”

“Kyle!” Visibly Adam struggled for control. “You don’t understand. What you are doing is self-destructive. It’s…dangerous.”

A frisson of alarm slithered down my spine. “What does that mean? Is that a threat?” My gaze fell on the book he had laid aside when I walked in. Simon’s
Conquering Heart Disease
. My owner’s manual. “What’s this?”

He didn’t speak.

“Planning to knock me off next?”

Okay, I hadn’t had enough sleep, and I’d had way too many shocks in as many hours. I was scared of more things than I could name. People I had trusted all my life were turning out to be liars, thieves, possibly murderers.

“Kyle…” He breathed the word out like actors on TV do when they’ve been shot; kind of weak and disbelieving.

But then he fired back. “I’m not Cosmo. I’m not going to walk out on you when you need me.”

My turn to figuratively stagger back and see how badly I’d been hit.

“This has nothing to do with Cosmo.”

“This has everything to do with Cosmo. Everything that ever happened in this goddamn place has to do with Cosmo.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,
I thought. But I was wrong, because Adam wasn’t talking about himself, he was still talking about me.

“Can’t you see what this is really about? Cosmo abandoned you. You’re trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. You want it all neatly explained so it won’t hurt anymore.”

“If Cosmo walked out on me, then where’s the danger? What’s self-destructive about wanting some answers?”

“I’ll tell you what’s destructive.” Adam picked up the book. “According to this, alcohol will make your heart worse.”

White-hot fury washed through me. “You can’t let it alone, can you?”

His eyes were so dark they looked black. “Why won’t you talk to me? You go to the doctor; you’re obviously upset, and instead of talking to me, instead of dealing with it, you get drunk. You go to the Hall of Records, you start asking people questions like you’re playing cops and robbers. What’s going on? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Since we’re psychoanalyzing each other, let me ask you something,” I said. “If Brett hadn’t dragged you, would you have ever come back to Steeple Hill?”

“What the hell does that have to do with the price of turnips?”

“No,” I answered my own question. “You would not have.”

Adam was silent. Then he said more calmly, “You analyze this stuff too much.”

“Sorry if I’m prone to thinking. It must make a change after Brett.”

Anger flickered in his eyes, but his voice was level. “Kyle, I care for you. We could have something together. Something worth having. Why are you doing this?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to tell him what I feared, but I couldn’t find the words. Then the opportunity was lost forever as Adam spoke.

“I thought of you as a—a—”

“Child.”

“Seventeen-year-old boy. I’m not a pedophile.”

“I wasn’t planning on turning you over to my Guidance Counselor.” I added bitterly, “Brett was younger than me.”

Adam sighed. There was a wearied note in his voice that reminded me of how he used to sound with Brett sometimes. “He was an adult. You were how old when I moved here? Ten?”

“Thirteen.”

“And I was how old? Twenty-something?”

“Twenty. You wore size 11 shoes and  a sixteen-and-a-half-inches collar. Anything else you want to know about yourself?”

“That’s my point, Kyle. You were a kid. A cute kid who followed me around like a puppy.”

Oddly enough, that no longer stung. “I grew up a long time ago, Adam.”

“What I want you to understand is that I would never have laid a hand on you. Ever. And not because your father and Joel and every other adult in a five-mile radius would have had my balls. I wouldn’t do that to a child. I wouldn’t use a child.”

“No one’s suggesting—”

“But then you were fifteen, and then sixteen, and you—I liked you, Kyle. A lot. You—liked me. I had to make a conscious effort not to escalate things. I had to fix it in my mind that you were off-limits.” He concluded lamely, “It stuck, I guess.”

“And besides, you met Brett.”

A long sigh, like a final breath.

“Besides, I met Brett.” Adam raked a hand through his hair. Not a lot to chat about after that. The truth will set you free. In more ways than one.

“Kyle, you’re deliberately sidetracking me. Why?”

“Because I think we should clarify things.”

“Here we go again.” Adam’s lip curled. “Let me guess, you don’t think we should see each other?”

Actually my point was that he didn’t have a right to rein me in—hell, I don’t know if I
had
a point. Let’s say I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Maybe my obsession with the past was self-destructive, but right now my future didn’t appear to have a happy ending in sight.

And of course once Adam said it, I figured Adam was putting into words what
he
wanted.

“There’s not a lot of point, is there?”

I was still hoping he would argue. Adam said
nada
.

“I have to do this.”
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do
.

Unless another man’s got a better idea?

Adam gave a small nod as though at last I made sense. He headed for the front door.

“Then don’t let me keep you,” he said on his way out.

* * * * *

I was afraid if I took time to reflect, I’d fall apart, so I made a beeline for Micky’s and found her in her studio.

“Where’s the fire, kiddo?” She shook a cigarette out of the pack of Marlboros and lit it. She inhaled deeply, studying the painting on the easel, head tilted, eyes narrowed at blue sunflowers from another planet.

“I want to ask you something.”

“Ask away.” Somehow she managed to rake the hand with the cig through her long hair without setting her hair on fire.

“Were you the model for
Virgin in Pastel
?”

Micky whirled, her green eyes feral. “No. I told you no. If one more person asks me that—!”

“Why was Brett blackmailing you?”

“Blackmailing me?”

If only she had sounded more indignant and less alarmed. My heart sank.

I leaned back against the wall, watching her. “He was blackmailing you then?”

“Do you think I’d put up with blackmail for five minutes?” She looked dangerous. The kind of dame Philip Marlowe might have encountered on one of his mean streets.

“No.” I didn’t have to think it over.

“Damn straight. I told the little prick to go right ahead and I’d sue his ass—or Adam’s ass, if it came to that.”

My head snapped up. “Adam? Did Adam know?”

She took an agitated puff of her cigarette. “I have no idea what Adam knew or didn’t know. He brought that little snake here; it was his responsibility to keep tabs on him.” Exhaling, she reminded me of a small fire-breathing dragon.

I nodded. Stared at my foot in its scuffed sneaker. This wasn’t easy. I raised my head. “Brett was your son, wasn’t he?”

She opened her mouth for instant denial, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You…don’t?”

Reluctantly she admitted, “He said he was. He could have been I guess, although…”

“Although what?”

“They told me the baby died. It could have been a lie.”

If I said the wrong thing she was liable to clam up, but I was totally confused by now. Cautiously I tried, “The orphanage people told you your baby died?”

Micky’s nose wrinkled. “Orphanage? Child Services informed me the baby died with the parents—the couple who adopted it.”

It. Not exactly the maternal type, our Micky. Joel had provided most of the mothering in my life. But Micky had always been there for me, tough and tender in her own idiosyncratic way.

“You gave your baby up for adoption?”

“Bingo.” She stubbed out her cigarette.

“And Brett claimed that he was your son?”

She snorted, still not meeting my gaze. “Now I know why cats eat their young.”

“Yeech. They don’t, do they?” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Was Brett—was the baby—” I half swallowed the name, “Cosmo’s?”

For a moment there was a sparkle in Micky’s eyes that could have been anger or tears. “Yes.”

My throat knotted. It was hard to get the words out. “Did he know?”

She shook her head. “I was a big girl. I dealt with it. Cos already had a kid; he wasn’t in love with me. And, let’s face it, I’m not exactly Brady Bunch material.”

I pushed off the wall and tried to put my arm around her slim shoulders. “You were great to me, Micky. Always.” After a moment she let me hug her.

“That’s because I could hand you over to Cosmo when I got tired of playing with you.”

Yeah, that was the funny part. Imagining Cosmo taking care of a kid. I couldn’t picture him bathing, feeding, dressing a small child—tucking a little kid into bed at night. I couldn’t picture it and I had been the little kid.

How long had it been since I let myself remember?

I said, “So you told Brett to publish and be damned?”

“Something like that.”

“And Brett?”

“Exit stage left.”

I blinked. “You didn’t—?”

An unpleasant smile flickered across Micky’s features.

“No, I didn’t. But I could have.”

When I left Micky’s, I went home and went to bed. Three hours of sleep a night was definitely not what the doctor ordered. And even without the sleep deprivation, I’d had an emotionally exhausting morning. If I had bad dreams I slept too deeply to know it.

When I woke it was four o’clock in the afternoon. I lay there staring up at the shadows of wisteria on the ceiling, listening to the music floating across the meadow from Adam’s cottage. I felt drained, empty. Like you do when you’ve been sick with a fever and the fever finally breaks.

I ran a quick internal audit. My heart thumped steadily along. Maybe a little fast, but it was a hot afternoon. Maybe the new dosage would do the trick. After all, it wasn’t like the strain of the last few weeks was normal for me. Maybe…

Too soon to get my hopes up. All the same, I needed to start making plans for my future. Maybe two sets of plans depending on what my future was going to be, but somehow I didn’t feel like I could move forward when the past seemed to be converging—and the intersecting point seemed to be right where I was standing.

I showered, ate a peanut butter sandwich, and sat down at the kitchen table to do a bit of mind mapping as set down by Leonardo de Vinci in his
Treatise on Painting
.

On a large sketchpad I drew a globe containing the word COSMO in the center of the page. With a different colored pencil I jotted down key words as they occurred to me in a circle around the globe. Words like Art, Lover, Father, Mystery. I connected these words to the central image.